Hockey: Loughborough hit worst by England plans

The short English Indoor season gets underway in Birmingham and Kidderminster today and tomorrow with the ever popular DTZ Invitation Tournament bringing together 16 leading clubs from England, Scotland and Wales in a format of four pools of four today and a knockout competition tomorrow. The final will be played at the Cocks Moors Wood centre tomorrow at 3.15pm.

The tournament normally provides a good opportunity for the teams to warm up for the English National League, which opens next weekend amid controversy.

England's Performance Unit has announced a training camp for 40 of the leading players who will all now miss half of the Indoor League programme – something of a smack in the eye to Higgins Group, the recently announced new sponsors of the League.

Loughborough Students, who, after reaching the National semi-finals last season, had set their sights on Europe this season, are likely to be the worst affected. Their manager, Bob McBlane, said yesterday: "It is so disheartening. The Indoor season is already effectively restricted to three weekends and a finals evening for the four sides contesting Europe and is now further handicapped with the late decision to include an outdoor training camp covering one of the weekends.

"We will have to play half our League programme missing five players in the England squad plus our player-coach, Jason Lee, who is one of the coaches. A snub also to the new sponsor Higgins Group."

Three of England's leading clubs will be in Barcelona for the prestigious Los Reyes Tournament. Reading and Cannock, who lead the men's Premier, and Fyffes Leicester, who are currently third in the women's Premier, will be taking part. In each case their major opponents are likely to come from the Dutch club Klein Zwitzerland.

An England veterans squad, led by the Seoul Olympic Gold medalist captain Richard Dodds and including Paul Barber and Kalbir Bhaura from the Olympic side, will tackle Spain, Belgium and Germany. The England squad has the experience of a total of 1,262 international caps.